Search the Dictionary

Of habitual bad temper; peevish; fractious; cross; crabbed; surly; as, an ill-natured person.

Of bad temper; morose; crabbed; sour; peevish; fretful; quarrelsome.

or attribute. [Obs.] Whence might this distaste arise If [from] neither your perverse and peevish will. To which I most imply it. J. Webster.

uality or state of being incompliant; unyielding temper; obstinacy. Self-conceit produces peevishness and incompliance of humor in things lawful and indifferent. Tillotson.

Snappish; peevish. [Obs.] Grafton.

Hence: Out of humor; peevish; angry; fretful; also, abstracted and pensive; sad; gloomy; melancholy. "Every peevish, moody malcontent." Rowe. Arouse thee from thy moody dream! Sir W. Scott.

To find fault; to be peevish. [Prov. Eng. or Scot.]

raze at odds. Set them into confounding odds. Shak. I can not speak Any beginning to this peevish odds. Shak. At odds, in dispute; at variance. "These squires at odds did fall." Spenser. "He flashes into one gross crime or other, that sets us all at odds." Shak. -- It is odds, it is probable. [Obs.] Jer. Taylor. -- O…

A slight fit of peevishness or fretfulness. "In a pet she started up." Tennyson.

Fretful; peevish; moody; capricious; inclined to ill temper. "A pettish kind of humor." Sterne. -- Pet"tish*ly, adv. -- Pet"tish*ness, n.

The quality or state of being petulant; temporary peevishness; pettishness; capricious ill humor. "The petulancy of our words." B. Jonson. Like pride in some, and like petulance in others. Clarendon. The lowering eye, the petulance, the frown. Cowper.

Peevishness; petulance. [Obs.] Fuller.

having the qualities of a shrew; having a scolding disposition; froward; peevish. My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours. Shak. -- Shrew"ish*ly, adv. -- Shrew"ish*ness, n.

Sharp in reply; apt to speak angrily or testily; easily provoked; tart; peevish. The taunting address of a snappish missanthrope. Jeffrey. -- Snap"pish*ly, adv. -- Snap"pish*ness, n.

The act of snarling; a growl; a surly or peevish expression; an angry contention.

Disagreeable; unpleasant; hence; cross; crabbed; peevish; morose; as, a man of a sour temper; a sour reply. "A sour countenance." Swift. He was a scholar . . . Lofty and sour to them that loved him not, But to those men that sought him sweet as summer. Shak.

Irritable; peevish; fretful. Spleeny Lutheran, and not wholesome to Our cause. Shak.

Affected with spleen; malicious; spiteful; peevish; fretful. "Splenetic guffaw." G. Eliot. You humor me when I am sick; Why not when I am splenetic Pope.

To debate peevishly; to dispute. The sense of these propositions is very plain, though logicians might squabble a whole day whether they should rank them under negative or affirmative. I. Watts.

Peevish; tettish; fretful; -- said of a child. See Tettish. [Obs.] Beau. & Fl.